Living on the West End: Stumping your toe
By Bill Shepard
Have you ever seen a youngster who has just stumped his or her toe?
Perhaps a better question would be, have you ever stumped your toe?
I mean, really stumped it!
You strike it so hard against an object that refuses to move and you look down and your toenail is missing and the blood is flowing.
You reach down and grab your leg around the ankle and then sit down and begin crying out loudly, hoping that someone will hear and come to help you.
You move your hands from their ankle-hold and get a tight grip around your foot and squeeze tightly.
That only makes the blood flow more freely from the space where the toenail once was.
You scream louder than before, hoping that this time someone will hear and come to your rescue before you bleed to death!
Oh yes, you wish you had put your shoes on before coming out to play, and vow that you will never again go barefoot!
Just before you decide that you will bleed to death, you hear the door leading to the outside open and your Mama appears. She kneels down by your side and takes your little foot in her hands and begins blowing her warm breath on your bleeding toe.
All the time she is whispering softly, “It’s all right, your toenail will grow back.”
It’s amazing as to what happens within those few moments.
I have lived the story more than once during my childhood years.
I seldom got through the summer without having the above experience.
Our back yard had two large trees, and the roots from those trees grew along the top of the ground in places.
My toe seemed to know exactly where to find them and try to kick them out of the ground.
Mama’s cure was a white cloth soaked in kerosene and tied around my hurt toe.
In a short time, a new nail would begin to grow where the old one was, and just in time to wear my shoes at the beginning of the school year.
Now this:
Now, along the road of life you’ll find a fellow going slow,
And like or not, he is some poor soul who has been and stumped his toe.
He was making swimming headway ’til he bumped into a stone,
And his friends kept hurrying onward and left him there alone.
Now, he ain’t sobbing and a-sniffling, he’s too old to cry,
But he is grieving and hurting, though he keeps it all inside.
And it does a lot of good sometimes to go a little slow,
And speak a word of kindness to the guy who stumped his toe.
You can’t tell yourself and there ain’t no way to know,
Just when it will come your time to slip and stump your toe.
Today you are bright and happy in the world’s sunlight and glow,
But tomorrow, you may be freezing and trudging in the snow.
The time you think you have the world tightest in your grip,
Is the very time you’ll find you’re the likeliest to slip.
So it does a lot of good sometimes to go a little slow,
And speak a word of comfort to the guy who has stumped his toe.
— Author unknown
